Application of comparative digital holography for distant shape control

The comparison of two objects is of great importance in the industrial production process. Especially comparing the shape is of particular interest for maintaining calibration tools or controlling the tolerance in the deviation between a sample and a master. Outsourcing and globalization of production places can result in large distances between cooperating partners and might cause problems for maintaining quality standards. Consequently new challenges arise for optical measurement techniques especially in the field of industrial shape control. In this paper we describe the progress of implementing a novel technique for comparing directly two objects with different microstructure. The technique is based on the combination of comparative holography and digital holography. Comparing the objects can be done in two ways. One is the digital comparison in the computer and the other way is by using the analogue reconstruction of a master hologram with a spatial light modulator (SLM) as coherent mask for illuminating the test object. Since this mask is stored digitally it can be transmitted via telecommunication networks and this enables the access to the full optical information of the master object at any place wanted. Beside the basic principle of comparative digital holography (CDH), we will show in this paper the set-up for doing the analogue comparison of two objects with increased sensitivity in comparison to former measurements and the calibration of the SLM that is used for the experiments. We will give examples for the digital and the analogue comparison of objects including a verification of our results by another optical measurement technique.